


The Destination and the Journey

by DeerstalkerDeathFrisbee



Series: The Spaces Between Thoughts and Words [1]
Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Friendship/Love, Gen, Gen or Pre-Slash, Injury Recovery, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-01
Updated: 2016-08-01
Packaged: 2018-07-28 14:04:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,711
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7643473
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DeerstalkerDeathFrisbee/pseuds/DeerstalkerDeathFrisbee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"There are no faster or firmer friendships than those formed between people who love the same books."<br/>- Irving Stone </p>
<p>Spock is injured on an away mission and Jim reads to him while he's comatose.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Destination and the Journey

"Books are the plane, the train, and the road

They are the destination and the journey.

They are home." 

\- Anna Quindlen

 

The last thing Spock remembered before...nothing was the look on Jim's face as first Spock, then he, realized the green blood soaking through Spock's shirt wasn't slowing down.

.

.

.

And then...

.

.

.

Vulcans do not dream. At least, that was what Sarek had always told his son. And Spock had always wondered if that was simply another polite falsehood, one of many that allowed their society to continue to take every carefully controlled step forward it did. Because Spock...suspected that he might dream. Perhaps. Because sometimes he'd wake up in the middle of the night, images flickering behind his eyes, just out of reach, already fading into the mists of his mind. And he'd wonder if these were merely thoughts half-formed as he awoke, or the the fading fragments of what his mother called dreams. But Spock never asked. He didn't want to tell his father of his half-hopes, his half-fears, his half-everythings, really - that he might dream. He didn't want Sarek's eyes to shutter in that mournful, pained way they did whenever Spock showed symptoms of his less than Vulcan heritage.

(Jim had once said, in that casual way of his, like it wasn't in any way earth-shattering - "hey, Spock, maybe your dad is so anal about your Vulcan-ness because seeing you get picked on, get hurt, y'know...maybe it would have hurt him too. To see you suffering. Maybe he was trying to protect you." Spock had just stared at him until Jim got uncomfortable and changed the subject, but sometimes the almost-Vulcan wondered what might have passed between them if he had accepted the captain's words as the facts he knew they probably were.)

But still. Human or Vulcan, Spock thought that he might dream. Sometimes.

.

.

.

After Jim's pale face faded away and the nothing took over there were no images, no dreams, no leftover imaginings.

.

.

.

But sometimes there were words.

.

.

.

"' _To be, or not to be--that is the question:_  
_Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer_  
_The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune_  
_Or to take arms against a sea of troubles_  
_And by opposing end them.'_

 

"You know, Spock, I really hate this Hamlet guy. He can't make a decision to save his life. You'd hate him too. Heh. You'd hate this whole play. You'd say the logical thing would be for Hamlet to take his indecision and emotional compromise and general incompetence elsewhere and leave his uncle on the throne because obviously this whiny, pathetic princeling would make a terrible King and leader. But I think it'd really get to you that Claudius remained at large, him being a fratricidal dick and all. I think the fact that the old King went unavenged would really get to you.

 

"After all, you avenged me."

.

.

.

"' _It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife...'_

 

"God, I can't believe I'm reading this one to you. It's pretty funny, though. Dry and snobby humor, definitely your thing. Plus it features a tall, dark, emotionally repressed guy and a headstrong, smart-mouth protagonist who initially hate each other but come together in a time of crisis. It's practically us! Plus some marriage proposals and minus a few near-death situations...

 

"I can't believe I'm reading you this"

.

.

.

_"I’m Nobody! Who are you?_  
_Are you – Nobody – too?_  
_Then there’s a pair of us!_  
_Don’t tell! they’d advertise – you know!_

_How dreary – to be – Somebody!_  
_How public – like a Frog –_  
_To tell one’s name – the livelong June –_  
_To an admiring Bog!'_

 

"Don't judge me. Emily Dickenson had it right. Do you remember, right after Nero? They chased us all to my apartment. They camped out in my lobby. I couldn't check the mail - you, me, and Bones were all stuck in Bones and me's shitty apartment eating questionably fresh shit out of the refrigerator for four days.

 

"I'd stopped hating you a long time ago, but that was when I started actually liking you.

 

"It's pretty hard not to like someone when you've seen them perform elaborate tests on leftover pizza to make sure it's safe to eat."

.

.

.

"' _He was not sane enough to realize he had gone somewhat mad; he was only mad enough to believe himself completely sane'_

 

"...fuck, Lloyd Alexander has a way with words. This used to be one of my favorite books as a kid. I liked the whole series but this one was my favorite. I stole the library's copy I read it so much.

 

"Which was pretty dumb in a town as small as Riverside, now that I think of it.

 

"I think about that quote a lot, though. I really, really, do."

.

.

.

"Just get better, okay? Just...wake up and bitch at me for filling your precious time with old Terran literature. Hell, I'd be okay with you complaining about my book choices. I mean, Bones already covered chewing me out for reading myself hoarse but I'd be okay with hearing the lecture again. I bet you'd have some new adjectives to add.

 

"Just...come back. From wherever you are. Come back."

.

.

.

Spock opened his eyes to a white ceiling and and raspy voice reading Shakespeare.

" _'Lord, what fools these mortals be -'"_

"Indeed." Spock rasped back to it and the voice, Jim's voice, the voice of a thousand stories, Spock's own thousand and one nights, stuttered to a stop. Spock pressed his advantage, digging more conversational fingers into this moment, as if the more words he anchored to the air, the more likely it was to be real. "I would like to read 'The Kestrel' again, while fully conscious, if I had not tested the food you would have surely poisoned yourself accidentally, I am discomfited by but am unable to refute the parallels you have drawn between myself and Mr. Darcy, and you were correct in my assumed assessment of Hamlet." He turned his head, it seemed to take an inordinate amount of effort. "You have been reading to me, have you not, Captain?"

"Yeah," Jim rasped, eyes bright and human and full of emotion, "Yeah I did"

"Excellent. I was concerned I was dreaming."

"It's what you did for me," Jim said abruptly, haltingly.

Spock blinked. "I read you my thesis. It was hardly scintillating material."

Jim shrugged, "I heard. In my coma, I heard. It convinced me I wasn't dead. Because there was no way in hell the afterlife included you rattling off equations like that."

Spock raised an eyebrow at him.

Jim, irrationally, beamed, "It's good to have you back."

Spock did not say 'It's what you asked for', but he did nod. "Thank you, captain." He paused, thinking, "perhaps we could meet sometime to finish our foray into the comedies. I hear 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' is a good starting point for those who do not know 'the Bard'."

Jim's smile, if possible, grew even brighter, "Yeah, a book club. Definitely."

Spock tilted his head to the side, "Or, perhaps, we could continue here?"

Jim grinned and, apparently no longer content with visitor furniture, hopped out of his chair to climb up on the biobed beside his first officer, "Scoot over. You're not comatose anymore, I'm not gonna treat you like an invalid." But despite his words, he was very careful arranging himself beside Spock, stretching out his legs on top of the covers so they lay parallel to the Vulcan's, knee-to-knee, ankle-to-ankle, hip-to-hip.

"I got sick a lot, as a kid" Jim said, abrupt, hands hovering over the unopened volume of plays (a book, a real book, smelling of old paper and dry, delicate time-worn leather, Spock had seen it on Jim's shelves, had wanted irrationally to touch it, to smell this piece of Earth...his mother had loved books, real books. Solid. Like this one. Like Jim and his shelves and shelves of paper books.) Jim fiddled with a worn corner, restless, "I had a lot of allergies and after...after Tarsus my immune system was shot to hell and I ended up in the hospital a lot. Mom used to do this. She'd bring a bunch of books and she'd sit in my bed and we'd read together. I'd put my head on her shoulder and let her voice just...carry me away. We read a lot of Shakespeare. Because there's so many plays and there's something for every mood, tragedy, comedy, history, it's all there. And when I was too sick to pay attention to the plots I could just listen to the rhythm of the words. Because they're all poetry, y'know?"

He looked up, met Spock's eyes briefly, then looked away again. "Just. With you here..." he exhaled, then started again, "When I was dead, then in the coma, after all the shit with Kahn, I remember you reading to me."

"Doctor McCoy informed me that often comatose patients register sound and find the voices of their friends and family...reassuring."

Jim smiled, "Yeah. Yeah, it was. And you were reading your thesis to poor not-quite-dead me; something that was really important to you. Something that was part of you. And I thought, maybe I should return the favor. So I read poor not-quite-dead you," Jim's smile was quick, pained, and wry, "some of the books my mom read to me. It seemed fair, I guess."

Spock looked at him, tracing the lines of his face with his eyes, disentangling the knot of words Jim had flung at him. "Yes. I...I thank you."

Jim gave him a quick grin, "What happened to 'thanks are illogical, captain'?"  
Spock arched an eyebrow at him and Jim laughed, delighted, and opened the book. "So, start at the beginning or start where we left off?"

"At the beginning."

"Sounds like a plan."

Jim cleared his throat and began to read.

"' _Now, fair Hippolyta, our nuptial hour_  
_Draws on apace; four happy days bring in_  
_Another moon: but, O, methinks, how slow_  
_This old moon wanes...'_ "

And Spock leaned his head on his captain's shoulder and followed the lines of print as they marched across the page to the tune of Jim's voice.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!
> 
> The books/plays/poems quoted here are: 'Hamlet' by William Shakespeare, 'Pride and Prejudice' by Jane Austen, 'Nobody' by Emily Dickinson, 'The Kestrel' by Lloyd Alexander, and 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' by William Shakespeare.


End file.
